“Fiennes Wilson? He’s a friend of Warren Hastings, and the other young bloods of the East India Company here.”
He understood that Wilson, of the wealthy Christchurch family, was attached to the East India Company in some way, but he knew little of Hastings or other names the lieutenant mentioned.
“Those are the men in John Company that are going to build India,” his lieutenant told him. “And make fortunes for themselves,” he added.
The vast accumulations of capital the India merchants could make were well known. Men of moderate means when they left England might return years later, if they survived the climate, with tens of thousands of pounds – nabobs they were called – who bought estates and even titles for themselves back in England.
“An introduction to Fiennes Wilson and Warren Hastings is a valuable asset,” the lieutenant went on. “Make good use of it, young fellow. I envy you.”
Fiennes Wilson was a tall young man of twenty-five. His face was so finely drawn and perfectly proportioned that he seemed to have stepped out of the classical world. His black hair was thinning, giving his forehead a look of greater height than it actually had.
To Adam, within minutes of their first meeting, he seemed like a Greek god and a hero.
It was not surprising. Fiennes Wilson had all the charm and easy manners of a young aristocrat; his eyes were sympathetic; he laughed easily; and he had a great deal of money.
He took in the young fellow at a glance and welcomed him like an old friend of the family.
“This is Mr Adam Shockley,” he told his other guests at their first dinner, “a friend of Sir George Forest’s. You’re an old Sarum family, I believe, Mr Shockley.”
Adam soon found that the other rich young men in Wilson’s circle knew people in Sarum with whom he was on nodding acquaintance – Wyndhams, Penruddocks and the like – and after the first evening he imagined himself very much at home.
It was a pleasant thing, he decided, to be a gentleman from Sarum.
Wilson was in Madras only briefly. He had taken the house of an East India Company man who had returned to England for some months, and he lived in splendid style. The men he entertained there were fine fellows. And some rather fine native women came to the place too, it was rumoured. These Adam had yet to see, but he lived in hope.
He had already made inroads on the twenty pounds from his father, but he did not allow this to worry him. Life was such an adventure.
The climax of his stay in Madras had been when young Wilson had sent him a note inviting him to come hunting.
He had never seen anything like it – a full-blown affair with native noblemen and young English bloods riding elephants, and using cheetahs to chase the quarry – a far cry from the humble pig-sticking that was the usual sport of other ensigns. It lasted three days, and they killed a quantity of game including numerous bison and three tigers.
By the time this was over, although he was no spendthrift, the twenty pounds was down to five, and Adam might have been seriously concerned, if another event had not put all other thoughts out of his mind.
For now news came of the Black Hole of Calcutta.
It was a strange business – the former minister of an Indian prince who was supported by the French, had taken refuge with the British in Calcutta. The prince, Suraj-ud-Dowlah, then attacked Calcutta and after the women and children had escaped, the one hundred and forty-six Englishmen left there were put in a single prison room: they were left there in the murderous August heat and only twenty-three survived.
This was the signal: the Black Hole must be avenged.
And then there followed an extraordinary negotiation.
For the commanding officer of the 39th regiment, Colonel Adlercorn, refused to lead it. This was because Governor Pigot in Madras would not guarantee him a great enough share of the spoils if the expedition were victorious; nor would the Colonel engage to return if summoned.
It was because of this squabble that a brilliant, but bored young official of the East India Company, Robert Clive, was given command instead. In 1756, Clive, with a portion of the 39th, sailed north to Calcutta.
The ensuing campaign was short and brilliant, and culminated the following June when Clive’s 1100 whites, 2100 natives and ten field pieces faced the huge army of Suraj-ud-Dowlah – 18,000 horse, 50,000 foot and 53 pieces of heavy ordnance served by French gunners.
What a glorious day that had been. He had watched the council of officers; seen Clive hesitate and seemingly take counsel with himself under some mango trees. Then, despite the odds, they had charged. At first, Adam had assumed he was going to die. Instead, they had won an astonishing victory. He felt like a hero.
Following the custom of the time and country, the treasury of the Indian prince was open to the victors. For himself Clive took the fabulous sum of £160,000, though the Indians thought this modest. Another half million was distributed to the army and navy. Young Ensign Shockley, recently arrived, had taken part in the battle and received £500. The British were now the controlling power in India, and he was in funds.
It was good not to feel poor. He guarded the money carefully, but all the same, he felt free to spend a little on himself. There were other campaigns still to be fought. If he could see more action, there might be a chance of obtaining further windfalls.
For the time being, however, he was back in Madras, enjoying a little leisure.
The company was a large one that evening, some twenty young men sat down to dine. Some he had met before, but there was a contingent of hard-faced young fellows that were new to him, but whom Wilson seemed to know well. The talk was partly of the campaigning, which he could join in, and of East India Company affairs, about which he was a listener rather than a participant. There was the usual personal badinage, and often references would be made to great names or estates, which he recognised but seldom personally knew.
It pleased him, though, to be accepted as a junior member of such a company, and he ate and drank in a state of great contentment.
There were undercurrents in the conversation tonight, however, that he detected but did not fully understand. All the company seemed aware that something was going to happen. There were occasional nods and winks, some directed, he thought at him. There was also, as the evening wore on, a constant barrage of conversation from the group he did not know about racing, wagers and gambling matters. He knew Salisbury races well enough and he prided himself that he could play a fair game of whist; he could take a hand at cribbage, and everyone was familiar with vingt-et-un and quinze. But these men spoke of other games that he had never even heard of.
Once or twice he tried to smile knowingly when some remark was made to him that he did not understand; but he felt a little uncomfortable. He drank more wine than usual.
Was it his imagination, or had Fiennes Wilson changed? At the smaller dinners he had been to, and when he had gone hunting, Wilson had always been kindly towards him and paid him special attention. Perhaps it was just the larger company, but now his friend’s face seemed rather distant. There was a new hardness in his eyes too, that almost matched those of his gambling friends. As Adam gazed along the table at him, he felt a faint sense of disappointment. He drank some more, and talked earnestly to the man on his right – though afterwards he could remember nothing of what he had been saying.
It was well into the evening that the girls came in. There were ten of them. “Enough to go round us all,” someone cried.
“I’ll share with Shockley,” the fellow opposite him remarked loudly. “He looks too damned drunk to need his share.” It was a joke. But the tone of the man’s voice was unfriendly.
There was laughter at this and he glanced at Wilson. But his friend’s eyes only returned a hard glazed stare, which said – fend for yourself.
There was music. The girls danced. He had seen dancing before, but never anything so good. Sinuous, fluid, erotic, they entertained them for half an hour and Adam, who had only lost his virginity wi
th a girl in the town the month before, felt a strong desire for them. Though he had to admit the gibe about his being too drunk was probably correct. For the time being, however, the girls retired and the young men continued drinking.
It was a little later, when he had leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment that he heard the conversation two places to his left. It was between one of the men he didn’t know and another, who had been on the hunt with him, and who he had thought was his friend.
“Who’s the young fellow?”
“Shockley.”
“Never heard of him. What is he?”
“Nothing much. A dependant of Wilson’s of some kind.”
“Oh.”
They had gone on to discuss other matters.
He kept his eyes closed. A wave of coldness passed over him, then he blushed. He opened his eyes a little. No one was looking at him.
A dependant. It had not occurred to him they did not accept him as one of themselves. He was younger of course; but he thought he was a gentleman.
Suddenly the realisation came over him, and as he thought of his father’s modest house and the frown on his face when he had originally to pay for the commission, he saw exactly how he must appear to the young blood on his left. A dependant – was that all he was?
One or two of the girls reappeared, not to dance, but to sit with the men. He saw that Wilson had one on his knee.
There was talk of further entertainment. Would they have more dancing, music, cards? Some suggested that they needed a song.
It was then that Wilson looked up. His eyes were heavy-lidded now. His handsome, Grecian face look slightly debauched; but his eyes as they moved round the table seemed to miss nothing. They came to rest upon Adam.
“Shockley,” he said, “will give us a song.”
Adam blushed furiously. His mind went blank.
“Quite right,” someone cried. “Sing, Shockley.” And again – was it his imagination? – he thought he detected contempt in the voice.
He could think of nothing. There was a look of arrogance on Wilson’s face now.
“You must sing for your supper,” he announced, flatly, and when he still hesitated: “Sing, damn you.”
“He can’t sing,” the man opposite called, “let’s play cards.”
There was a general chorus of agreement. Wilson ceased to look at him and turned his attention to the girl.
The table broke up in a desultory fashion. Several men disappeared, presumably with the girls. A few gathered in little groups at each end of the table where they contrived to drink together. The rest moved to where card tables were being set up.
He was left alone.
It was a blow to find that Wilson despised him for being poor. He supposed he could not blame him.
But yet something inside him rebelled. He was a gentleman from Sarum, whatever these strangers might think of him. A descendant of Cavaliers. He had a little money too, after Plassey. He would be nobody’s dependant.
Wilson was sitting at one of the table ends. Adam ignored him. He went to the card tables instead, and quietly watched. After a while, when someone left a game and he was asked if he cared for whist, he nodded. He knew how to play. And when one of the men looked doubtful and asked him if he was sure he cared to lose, he gave him a calm look and remarked casually:
“I haven’t spent my Plassey money yet.”
The man shrugged and said no more.
The next morning, when Adam Shockley did his reckoning in the cold light of day, he found that he had lost just four hundred and twenty pounds. With the thirty he had spent since Plassey, he had forty pounds left.
He was resigned. A gentleman must pay his gambling debts.
“But I need a new campaign,” he muttered.
It was unfortunate then, that shortly afterwards, the 39th were ordered back to Ireland.
They took a tiger with them as a mascot, and saw the great comet predicted by Halley on the way.
1767
Lieutenant Shockley looked at Madame Leroux, and then he stared thoughtfully out to sea at the dot on the horizon he knew must be the English packet. If the news the ship brought was good, he would marry her, no matter what the opposition in the regiment.
She did not know it. He had allowed her to prepare to leave.
In the year 1767, Lieutenant Adam Shockley, no longer of the 39th, but of the 62nd Foot, was a good-looking, broad-chested man of thirty-two whose fair hair was thinning. His face was bronzed and weatherbeaten. He was respected as a sound, even-tempered officer to whom many of the younger fellows came for advice.
For four years now, he had been on the sultry island of Dominica in that part of the West Indies then called the Charibees.
And for almost a year, he had enjoyed the company of Madame Leroux.
She was a strange woman; her husband, who had been killed at sea by a privateer, was a French merchant and, insofar as she was anything, she was French herself. Her age, Shockley supposed, must be between twenty-five and thirty. Still more indeterminate was her race. Her skin was pale, her hair almost white and formed naturally into short, frizzy curls. The rumour was that she had negro blood. There was a languid, sensuous quality about her: she was a being apart. Though the French had lost the island to the British, she had not troubled to speak more than rudimentary English and she generally treated the new occupants with silent disdain.
“It’s not my business where you go, Shockley,” the major had said to him one day, “but Madame Leroux is not popular with us, you know.”
Adam did not care. During the warm nights he had known a sexual passion richer than anything he had experienced before, and by day even with his own mediocre French, he had come to love her gentle, mocking humour.
And what else was there for him now, in any case? He would not be the first poor English officer in a warm outpost to take a foreign or unsuitable wife.
The years after Plassey had seen a series of English victories. Wolfe had taken Quebec and secured Canada for the English. The last battles of the Seven Years War in Europe had been fought and won. At Minden, the death of a superior officer had given him the chance to be promoted lieutenant on the battlefield. But after that, there had been few opportunities either for battle promotion or for profit. What commissions came up – captain lieutenant or full captain – were usually snapped up by rich young men from the Guards. Soon after the accession of the new king George III, he had transferred to the 62nd in the hope of action and reward in the West Indies, but had seen little of either and was almost as poor as before.
One sad event had taken place just after his arrival there: his mother had died.
His father wrote to him gloomily about it and warned him that, although there would in time be something due to him from certain interests she had with her family, the funds would take time to come through and would in any case be small.
He was surprised, within the year, to hear from Jonathan that he had married again and that his new wife was already pregnant. There had been no more word in his father’s letters about the funds coming to him; and he had not cared to ask.
So he had settled down, on the lush and sultry island of Dominica, to several years of garrison duty where the only military activity was to train men in parade ground tactics that he suspected would be useless for anything but a set-piece battle, and the only casualties from such tropical sicknesses as malaria.
In this enforced and enervating idleness, until he struck up his friendship with Madame Leroux, Adam Shockley had two principal sources of pleasure. The first was his correspondence with his father.
Jonathan Shockley wrote well. His caustic wit, which had sometimes been daunting and confusing to Adam as a boy, came through far better in his letters to his son now that Adam was a man. He kept Adam abreast of Sarum affairs – of the weakened cloth trade, the doings of Mr Harris, and the scandal of young Lord Pembroke temporarily deserting his young wife – so that Adam could almost feel he was bac
k in the close and hearing his father’s voice. He often gave him useful information, too, about more general political affairs.
Above all, he served as a conduit for his son’s other newfound pleasure. For Adam now developed a taste for books.
“I have made a late start upon my education,” he confessed to one of the other lieutenants, “but the truth is I have never enjoyed any kind of learning until now.”
Very soon, half of what he could save from his pay was going on purchases of books, which Jonathan willingly sent out to him, often with his own pungent comments upon them. Father and son wrote to each other on the merits of Dr Samuel Johnson’s great dictionary. Numerous lighter works – Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels arrived; then heavier matter: Clarendon’s great volumes of history, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the more recent philosophical works of Hume and Bishop Berkeley. He even read Voltaire, and admired that great man’s mockery of the confusion and humbug of the day’s organised religion.
“With great minds for company, a man is never lonely,” Adam concluded.
Jonathan’s comments on political events too were thought provoking. One letter which came soon after the American colony had protested about the English Parliament’s levying of a stamp duty tax on them, always remained in Adam’s mind.
I was vastly amused to hear that the colonists’ ambassador – I know not how else to describe the man – Mr Benjamin Franklin, being in London at the time the said Stamp Act was first brought in, made haste to procure for three of his friends positions as stamp masters, which I am assured would have given them little exertion but a handsome income each of £300 a year!
And now, my dear Adam, I shall give you my view of the American colony which, I am proud to say, is shared by none.
For ’tis clear to me that the most foolish thing we ever did was to beat the French so handsomely. The gentlemen of the colony, having no great threat made against them any more will soon be grown indifferent to England for whose army, and the expense thereof, they will think themselves no longer in need. There’s the rub. Excuses will be found, but they’ll not pay taxes across the ocean.